When, in 1938, German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann released an incredible two hundred million electron volts of energy by being the first to successfully split uranium, physicians across the globe were ecstatic. Hahn and Strassmann had discovered what became known as fission, which scientists had been theorizing over and searching for ever since the discovery of radioactivity in the 1890s and James Chadwick’s discovery of the neutron in 1932. With the discovery of fission, and along with it the confirmation that the production of nuclear weapons was indeed possible, came a frenzy of nuclear research. America, fearful of Germany creating nuclear weapons before them, did not exclude itself from this.
However, before any actual engineering could be done, several questions needed to first be addressed: what element(s) could and should be used, and, though proven to be potentially possible, was creating a nuclear bomb actually a feasible goal? Further research showed that the isotope used in Hahn and Strassmann’s experiment was a rare isotope of uranium, uranium-235, and the only other reasonable contender for making nuclear bombs was Plutonium, a man-made element first created in 1940. However, both uranium-235 and plutonium were extremely difficult to procure, and scientists were estimating that many tons would be needed in order to sustain a nuclear chain reaction. These estimates, however, weren’t very accurate. It wasn’t until the summer of 1941 that credible estimates were made, approximating that just a few kilograms of U-235 would be required. Suddenly, things were finally looking possible.
By 1939, up until 1946, the Manhattan Project—its intent kept a secret from all but a select few—was underway, but it wasn’t until 1942 that the project was led by Major General Leslie Groves and featured notable scientists such as Julius Robert Oppenheimer, who is often credited as “the father of the atomic bomb”. Whereas Groves directed the project and managed the project’s budget, Oppenheimer was more of the brains of the project, as he was a mathematical genius. Groves was ambitious, testing every encountered possibility regardless of budget concerns. Under the project, fifty-nine thousand acres of land near Oak Ridge, Tennessee had been transformed for the purpose of extracting uranium-235. A total of two billion dollars, well over twenty billion dollars today, was consumed by the Manhattan Project.
By 1945, the US had produced two bombs: a uranium-based bomb called “the Little Boy”, and a plutonium-based bomb called “the Fat Man”. The Enola Gay, a B-29 bomber plane, dropped the Little Boy on Hiroshima in August of 1945. Shortly after, the Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki, ending the war with Japan, but killing or wounding hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in the process. Through this, the US demonstrated to the world just how terrifying modern science could truly be.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.